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Wind damage minimal despite major gusts all around us
With winds topping 60 mph in Montgomery County and hitting 56 mph in Terre Haute, from all indications, Putnam County was spared major wind damage in Thursday night’s storm.
However, some minimal damage was reported near Roachdale as winds blew over a carport at the Robert Keck property south of Roachdale on County Road 250 East and knocked down the Welcome to Roachdale sign at the south edge of town near the elementary school.
The Roachdale Fire Department also reportedly responded Friday morning to a small tree being blown down.
Russ Evans, Putnam County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) public information officer, said he had spoken with Putnam County EMA severe weather specialist Chris Edwards Thursday, and they agreed that the Roachdale damage was likely from part of a weather system that produced the major wind gusts that topped out at 62 mph at Crawfordsville.
Widespread damage, however, did not occur in Putnam County.
“I didn’t really hear of any trees down,” Evans said, noting that no local power outages were reported either.
“The lights flickered a couple of times,” he said of his Greencastle home, “but we never lost power.”
The National Weather Service reported the major gusts as 63 mph at Frankfort, the aforementioned 62 at Crawfordsville and 56 at Terre Haute, along with 45 at Peru and 40 at Lafayette.
The strong winds that swept through central Indiana damaged a horse sanctuary in Frankfort, killing one of its horses.
Indiana Horse Rescue said the damage from Thursday’s windstorm is “almost overwhelming.”
“During these winds, we also lost one of our mustangs that was in our mustang sanctuary,” a post on the group’s Facebook page stated.
Near Thorntown, a large tree was reported down along with power outages and roof damage to nearby buildings about two miles west of town.
Duke Energy reported more than 8,000 outages Thursday evening. Among the hardest hit areas were New Castle – which accounted for nearly 3,000 of the homes and businesses in the dark -- along with the communities of Lafayette, Terre Haute, Carmel and Kokomo.
“Outages are the result of high winds blowing trees and limbs into power lines,” Duke Energy spokesman Lew Middleton said.
Meanwhile, Indianapolis Power and Light reported more than 600 customers without power, with the outages largely in northwest and western Marion County.
In Carmel, police said power was out at Clay Terrace, with lights dark in the mall and stoplights out at 146th Street and Clay Terrace Boulevard because of downed power lines.